TNG-R - 'Sins of the Father' Missing Film • TrekCore.com

CBS/Paramount today revealed that they have been unable to locate a particular section of the original film elements to the episode ‘Sins of the Father’ which is due to be included on the Blu-Ray sampler disc, released on Jan 31 2012. In a document sent to retailers today, the studio states that:

“Sins of the Father” – 13 seconds of the original film elements for this episode have not been located and thus have been upconverted from Standard Definition videotape.

Fortunately this is only a very small part of the episode, however it does raise the alarming possibility that there may well be other sections of film missing from episodes in this project and as a result, certain scenes can only be presented in their SD format, upconverted to HD.

The original press release can be found over at TVShowsonDVD.com

Update: Our sources have now confirmed which scene in affected. It takes place at around 30:29 in the episode and lasts for approximately 13 seconds. The scene shows Dr. Crusher exiting the turbolift on the bridge and giving Riker the information about a second witness to the Khitomer massacre. The scene ends as we cut to a view of a bridge terminal station.

We’ve been assured that the scene itself fits pretty well into the episode and doesn’t appear jarring to the viewer. Obviously, if you look carefully you can certainly tell that it is an upconvert, but it doesn’t spoil the flow of the episode.

We have been advised that a disclaimer will be present on the disc itself mentioning exactly where the scene is. There is a possibility that the footage has simply been mis-labeled and is stored in a box that hasn’t yet been checked, so there is still a hope that the footage will be located at some point (hopefully before the 3rd season set is released). You can watch the scene below in full.

Finally, it should be noted that Paramount kept incredibly detailed logs and archives of the original film footage, so for the most part problems like this should be rare. However, the remastering team always expected that there would be a ‘few missing pieces’. Hopefully that number will be small. We’ll continue to keep you up-to-date with any further complications in the transfer process.